What makes a problem hard to solve

Here are an examples of hard to solve problems:

1. Two starving sailors on a life-boat are deciding who to eat first. Each has a veto power on the decision.
2.
3. A teacher education program consists of three major course blocks; each block is divided amongst various schools and colleges, and individual faculty. Each involved unit feels passionately about his or her piece and has something close to a veto power, or at least a power to delay resolution. The task is to improve the program by strengthening some components at the expense of others.
4.
What makes both problems difficult to solve? OK, I’ll drop the pretence: what makes the second problem difficult to solve?

It is not the complexity of the problem. We are not rebuilding Iraq, for god’s sake. These course or those course, taught on this semester pr that semester. Not exactly the rocket science, or brain surgery. It should not take longer than a year to figure it out. A week of good planning should do it. Whatever philosophical disagreements people might have, are not very deep and certainly not irreconcilable.

It is not the high stakes; no one expect dramatic improvements from any kind of revision. In education, large effect sizes are truly uncommon, so we are talking about modest improvements. The truth is, whatever the configuration of the new program, it is going to be only moderately if at all better regardless of the specific configuration that takes place. No dependable data can be shown to demonstrate superiority of one proposal over another.

It is not that some people involved are evil or wrong. In fact, all people involved are highly competent, dedicated, and ready for change. I am an incorrigible structuralist, and never believe in much in “human factor” explanations. People tell all the time: “Oh, we would have been able to do it, if not for so and so, who is such a (select your own epithet).” Well, this is almost always the wrong explanation, because when the “bad apples” are replaced, things still don’t work out, and new “bad apples” are immediately and spontaneously appointed to take their place.

What then makes our problem difficult to solve? Very often, it is the way of solving a problem, rather than the problem itself. The smartest sailors should figure out how to fish, or the strongest sailor should fight and eat the weakest one. Deliberations won’t help. The same is true for our problem: if a solution involves real or perceived losses for one of the party, and it is not clear at the start which party will lose, no one should have a veto power.

The process must be structured in a way that the initial parameters make it clear what structural changes are needed to be made. No haggling over resources should be ever allowed, because it always muddles the issue. When people start dressing their concerns about turf in the rhetoric of “commitment to quality”, “research-based teacher education,” “liberal education values” and other venerable BS, no problem will be solved, and feelings will be hurt.

Then the parties affected by the structural changes should be given a full responsibility for making those changes happening to achieve certain given objectives. I don’t believe in holistic and perfect solutions. I’ve seen a lot of neat charts, but in real life, logistics and practicalities, the small details everyone wants to ignore, always trump our utopian designs. So, a series of incremental, localized, small solutions under a unifying vision are always more effective than one overarching, perfect-from-the-start plan. In the complex system like ours, part should be disentangled from each other, so they can show some flexibility and independence to address the practicalities, and remain in agreement on broad definitions of good curriculum.

To reform our IDLA/Elementary PTEP, here is what I would do:

Tell IDLA, PTEP, and Liberal Core faculty: here is your new share of credit hours. YOU will not get less or more; this is all you can play with.

Develop specific proposals for addressing the tasks outlined in the Provost’s charge. Keep in touch with each other while developing the changed.

Within each area, go through a similar process of setting the initial parameters, and them breaking up into even smaller projects (such as course mergers, course redesigned, new course development, advising structure).

Then get together and really coordinate how all your smaller projects will proceed. Appoint a small coordinating committee to make sure you will not step on each other’s toes all the time.

Conclusion: The sailors die not because their problem is hard to solve, but because they chose a wrong way of solving it. Instead of letting the smarter one think about fishing, and the stronger one save his strength for the last battle; they waste time and energy arguing to the point that they can neither think, nor fight.